CMA operates out of three offices with a staff of 14, 11 of whom have been tested and licensed as Series 50 Municipal Advisors with both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (“MSRB”). Following are resumes of some of the firm’s key, professional staff members.
Richard R. Tortora, Esq.
President and Principal
Richard manages the firm’s Great Neck office and is responsible for providing financial advisory services to the firm’s largest and most sophisticated clients. Over the course of his 33-year career in public finance, he has been involved in financings totaling over $50 billion. He has worked with numerous counties in New York State including Albany, Erie, Monroe, Rockland, Suffolk, Sullivan and Westchester. As a former bond attorney, he has expertise in the New York State Local Finance Law, the General Municipal Law and other laws pertaining to municipalities and school districts. Prior to co-founding CMA, he managed the northeast practice of Evensen Dodge, Inc., an independent financial advisory firm, for 9 years and prior to that he managed The Bank of New York’s financial advisory practice for 5 years.
Richard routinely speaks at industry conferences on a variety of public finance topics. In the past, he has addressed members of the public finance community on topics including “Credit Ratings and their Relationship to the Cost of and Access to Capital”, “The Use of Owner Controlled Insurance Programs to Reduce Project Costs,” “Roles and Responsibilities of Players in a Financing,” “Identifying and Executing Refundings,” and “Debt Management.” He has taught “Bonds 101” at the State’s Fall Finance School for newly elected government officials and at the Municipal Bond Club of New York for many years.
Richard holds a law degree from St. John’s University School of Law and a B.A. degree from Fordham University in Political Science/Public Administration. He is a former Board member of the New York State Government Finance Association (“GFOA”). Richard is a member of the NY Association of School Business Officials (“ASBO”), NY GFOA, and the National Association of Municipal Advisors (“NAMA”). He has been licensed by the MSRB and SEC as a registered Municipal Advisor Representative and Municipal Advisor Principal.
Rick Ganci, M.A.
Executive Vice President and Principal
Rick is Executive Vice President and Principal of CMA. He oversees the firm’s Western New York and Southern Tier offices and serves as lead financial advisor to many of the firm’s largest and most sophisticated clients including the cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the counties of Monroe and Niagara, the Erie County Fiscal Stability Authority, Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority and over 70 villages, towns and school districts. Over the course of his career at CMA, Rick has been involved in the issuance of over 1,500 bond, note and lease financings with a total par of over $12 billion. Prior to joining CMA, Rick was a banking officer in the treasury division of one of the nation’s largest commercial banks.
Rick completed his undergraduate work at Hobart College in Geneva, New York where he received a B.A. degree in economics and later received his master’s degree in economics from the University of Buffalo. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the New York State GFOA and a member of the GFOA Banking and Investment Management Committee and has presented to association members on “Best Practices in Debt Management” and Investment of Public Funds by Local Governments in New York State”. Rick has also recently presented on Capital Project Planning for School Districts at various seminars. Rick has been licensed by the MSRB and SEC as a registered Municipal Advisor Representative and Municipal Advisor Principal.
Anthony Nash
Senior Vice President
Anthony heads up the firm’s quantitative group, which performs our most complex and detailed financial analysis and has earned the recognition of the New York State Comptroller’s office. He structures competitively sold refunding bonds and escrow accounts. He works with many of the firm’s larger, downstate clients preparing disclosure documentation and performing financial modeling including bond amortization schedules, tax impact analysis and cash flow analysis.
Anthony joined CMA in 2003 as a Summer Associate and became a full time Analyst in 2004 after graduating from SUNY Binghamton with a B.S. in Financial Economics. He is a member of NYS GFOA and ASBO, and is a Series 50 Municipal Advisor Representative.
Janet Morley
Senior Vice President
Janet acts as CMA’s expert in providing credit rating services to our clients. Her duties at CMA include preparing credit rating presentations, analyzing data, conducting comparative analysis of comparable credits and preparing clients for their rating presentations. She also heads up CMA’s Lease Financing practice.
Janet has over 20 years of public finance experience in the banking and bond insurance industry. She began her career in public finance as a banker at Fuji Bank and from there moved to municipal bond insurer MBIA. At MBIA, Janet held management and senior positions related to credit analysis, deal structuring and remediation of troubled credits. Following MBIA, Janet was engaged by Berkshire Hathaway to provide credit and industry expertise on a consulting basis. Her career has focused on credit analysis across a broad spectrum of credit types including, but not limited to, general obligation, school districts, healthcare and special revenue. She has extensive experience in the remediation of troubled credits and bond deals as well as the negotiation of covenants and terms related to bank and bond documents. In addition, her current role on a Budget and Finance Advisory Task Force for a local municipality provides unique insight to the challenges being faced by local governments today.
Janet holds a B.S. degree in Economics from Lehigh University, from which she graduated magna cum laude. She is a member of MAGNY, NFMA and the Northeast Chapter of Women in Public Finance. Janet has been licensed by the MSRB and SEC as a registered Municipal Advisor Representative.
Alex Kerr, M.Ed.
Vice President
Alex specializes in school district financings and serves as client manager on over 70 districts. He provides day-to-day transaction support, performs financial modeling including bond amortization schedules, tax impact analysis and cash flow analysis and assists in the preparation of Official Statements. He has worked with clients on a variety of projects including the planning and issuance of advance refunding bonds, cash flow financings and debt issuance through the NYS Dormitory Authority
Alex completed his undergraduate work at Eckerd College where he received a B.A. in history and attended Dowling College where he earned a Masters Degree in Special Education. He is a member of the New York State GFOA and ASBO. He has been tested and licensed as a Series 50 Municipal Advisor Representative by the SEC and MSRB.
Diana Castañeda, M.A.
Vice President
Diana is one of CMA’s two, in-house credit experts. She joined CMA with 20 years of experience in public finance in New York State. She started her career at Moody’s Investors Service where she worked for 6 years as a public finance credit analyst. While at Moody’s, as part of the rating process, Diana analyzed the budgets of counties, cities and housing finance agencies across the Northeastern United States. She next moved to Assured Guaranty, the nation’s largest municipal bond insurer, where she worked for two years. Prior to joining CMA, she was a Vice President at The Bank of New York Mellon where she worked at the bank’s Public Finance, Capital Markets and Derivatives Groups. At CMA she has advised numerous school districts and municipalities including Nassau BOCES, East Ramapo Schools, and the towns of Mamaroneck, Mount Pleasant, and Ramapo.
Diana is an active member of the Northeast Chapter of Women in Public Finance, NYS GFOA, and the Municipal Analysts Group of New York. Strategic Consulting clients of CMA that she has worked with include Albany, Suffolk and Ulster counties, the City of Long Beach, and the town of Brookhaven. Diana completed her undergraduate work at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and obtained a master’s degree from NYU. She is a licensed Series 50 Municipal Advisor Representative and works out of CMA’s Great Neck office. Diana is fluent in both Spanish and English.
Tom Vouzakis
Vice President
Tom serves as a Municipal Advisor to numerous school districts and municipalities across New York State. He has experience structuring new money and refunding bond issues as well as preparing disclosure documentation and credit rating presentations. His municipal advisory clients include the towns of Riverhead and Islip, cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach, school districts in Bethpage Great Neck, Haldane, and Valhalla. Tom is also active in CMA’s Strategic Consulting Group. He has expertise preparing multi-year financial plans and budgets. His strategic consulting client assignments have included, to date, the US Virgin Islands, towns of Islip, Ramapo and Riverhead, cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach and counties of Nassau and Ulster.
Tom has a B.S. degree in Finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business. He interned for CMA for three summers before joining the firm as a full-time Analyst. He is a Series 50 Municipal Advisor Representative and works out of CMA’s Great Neck office.